2012年11月24日 星期六

Euroskeptic UK to argue for EU budget freeze

Eurozone crisis

Euroskeptic UK to argue for EU budget freeze

UK Prime Minister David Cameron heads to Brussels to argue for a freeze
in the next EU budget while under pressure at home to hold a referendum
on EU membership. Polls show a majority of Britons want to leave the
bloc.

A fresh opinion poll has showed that 56 percent of Britons would either
definitely, or most likely, vote to leave the EU in a referendum. Only
30 percent said they wanted the UK to remain a member. The desire to
leave cut across all the three main political parties.
Europe has traditionally split Prime Minister Cameron‘s Conservative
party, but the past fights were largely over institutional points, such
as how to renegotiate parts of the UK's commitments to the EU.

David Cameron faces strong opposition to staying in the European Union

This time, it is about money, which is something most people
understand, and a growing number within Cameron's own party now openly
argue for Britain to leave the Union altogether.
“We've seen the introduction of a younger generation of politicians who
are more populist in their leaning and certainly more euroskeptic,” Andy
Mycock, a political scientist at the University of Huddersfield told
DW.
“That makes it more difficult for David Cameron to represent broader
British interests and to try to maintain a sense in which Britain has a
commitment to the European Union.”Uphill battle
The Prime Minister was already facing an uphill battle at this week's
Brussels budget summit, where he was expected to argue for a real-term
freeze in future EU spending. The European Parliament wants a six
percent increase.
But earlier this month euroskeptics from both Cameron's Conservative
party and the opposition Labour party formed a parliamentary majority
calling for cuts to the EU budget.

Britain's 'euroskeptics' surfing a wave of popularity

Observers say this makes it impossible for the British prime
minister to return to London with good news to present to his party,
further fueling a euroskeptic desire for a referendum on Britain's
future in the Union.
David Cameron wants to leave the question of a referendum until the next
general election, due in 2015. An earlier vote would most probably mean
the end of his current government because his coalition partners, the
Liberal Democrats, do not support a referendum at all.
Euroskeptics within Cameron's party have been busy capitalizing on the
opinion poll showing majority support for the UK to exit the EU.
“The basis on which we joined the EU has been falsified. Instead of
making its peoples get on better, it has stoked national antagonisms,”
Conservative MEP Daniel Hannan wrote in the Guardian newspaper this
week.
“Ponder the astonishing fact that our net budget contribution [to the
EU] in 2011 was more than the savings made by all the government's
domestic spending cuts put together. Every penny squeezed out of our
austerity program is being sent to Brussels.”Austerity breeding euroskepticism

EU finance minister have to come up with a budget that all 27 countries agree on.

David Cameron's government is in the middle of delivering severe cuts
to public spending, which is having an impact on large swathes of the
UK population. Andy Mycock of Huddersfield University believes this,
along with the Euro-crisis, is contributing to the current record-level
of anti-EU sentiment in Britain.
“This [opinion poll] is very much a malleable and flexible indication,
and over the last 20 years we've seen support for European Union
membership rise and fall in line with political opinion and also the
economic situation in the United Kingdom. When it becomes more clear
that the United Kingdom leaving the European Union would have
significant economic implications for the British people, I suspect that
they would not vote to leave the European Union,” Mycock said.
Yet as long as his party remains split on Europe, David Cameron cannot
ignore calls for a referendum. The Conservatives are also bleeding
voters to the anti-EU Independence Party (UKIP). Once a marginalized
one-issue group, UKIP now commands seven percent of the vote in Britain.
“It's pretty obvious that UKIP has succeeded in influencing the way that
this whole debate has been discussed,” said John Whittaker, a former
UKIP MEP who is now an economist at the University of Lancaster.

For many euroskeptic Britons, the European Central Bank is a negative symbol.

“There are a lot of scare stories out there that if we left the
European Union somehow our trading relationship with the EU would
suffer. It might, marginally, but on the other hand there are a lot of
incentives for other members of the European Union to continue trading
with Britain.
“So I can't see that it would be very hard to form trading
relationships, whether it would resemble the EEA, EFTA or some kind of
bilateral relationship like Switzerland's,” Whittaker told DW.
While a referendum on whether Britain should remain an EU member is
unlikely during this parliamentary period, most commentators believe
Europe will be a major issue in the 2015 general elections.